The days are long, cicadas loud, the DCRPeople scattered to jobs and internships and sunny vacations. Yes, it’s officially (according to the Registrar, at least) summertime!
We wish to offer congratulations to all recent graduates, but especially to Candela Cerpa and Kathryn Cunningham. As Editor-in-Chief of the Carolina Planning Journal and Managing Editor of Angles, respectively, Candela and Kathryn have worked hard over the past year to put together a journal and a blog packed full of thought-provoking reportage. Volume 49 of the Journal – Everyday Life and the Politics of Place – will be out soon, so make sure to get your copy!
As we celebrate Candela and Kathryn, we’d also like to take the opportunity to introduce ourselves – their successors!
Samantha Pace | Editor-in-Chief, Carolina Planning Journal
The next Editor-in-Chief of the Carolina Planning Journal will be Samantha Pace. Samantha is a third year in a dual Masters program in City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill and Environmental Management at Duke University. She is interested in climate resilience and adaptation, public spaces, and urban design. After receiving her undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from North Carolina State University, she worked at a biotechnology start-up in Research Triangle Park for 3 years. In her free time, Samantha enjoys camping, live music, block printing, and making pizzas.
Joe Wilson | Managing Editor, Angles
Taking over as Managing Editor of Angles is Joe Wilson, a second-year master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is specializing in Housing and Community Development. Before returning to school, Joe worked as an assistant teacher in Carrboro and an urban education fellow in Brooklyn, experiences which continue to shape his understanding of and interest in cities. Outside of planning, Joe enjoys running, watching baseball, and visiting the zoo.
We are beyond excited to get to work on the next volume of the Journal and another year of insightful blog posts. The 2024/2025 academic year marks a major anniversary for both institutions – the 50th volume of the Carolina Planning Journal and the tenth year of Angles – and we have some big ideas to look forward to (and to look back on). If you’re interested in being a part, email carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com or reach out to Samantha or Joe directly.
The Carolina Planning Journal (CPJ) and ∆NGLES are excited to announce the editors for the 2023-2024 school year: Candela Cerpa and Kathryn Cunningham. Read on to learn more about them.
Candela Cerpa is a second-year master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is interested in equitable disaster planning, particularly around floods. Born and raised in Uruguay, she received her bachelor of science in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Maryland, College Park. Outside of work and school, she enjoys cooking and eating good food, listening to audiobooks, and organizing around climate and social issues.
KATHRYN CUNNINGHAM | Managing Editor, Angles
Kathryn Cunningham is a second-year master’s student with the Department of City and Regional Planning whose interests include climate change adaptation, parks, and public space. She studied Environmental Studies at Williams College and before coming to graduate school, she was in the San Francisco Bay Area managing sustainability projects for a law school. When not in class, she enjoys reading, running, and checking out all of the many concert venues the Research Triangle has to offer.
Please join us in giving a huge thank you and congratulations to our outgoing editors Lance Gloss and Jo (Joungwon) Kwon! Lance has graduated with a Master of City and Regional Planning. Jo will be in her fifth year of her Ph.D. and will continue to be a part of CPJ in the 2023-2024 school year. Read on for reflections from the two editors.
I have loved serving the CPJ as Editor-in-Chief for the past year. So many minds came together to deliver this volume of the Journal; helping to guide that process was serious fun. Our writers delivered thought-provoking research and earned the fruits of building relationships with their editors. Our editors, too, were persistent and thoughtful, and all grew tremendously. Jo Kwon did an absolutely brilliant job managing Angles, leveling up the blog by all accounts. The staff at DCRP were there every step of the way to help connect the dots on logistics. Now, I know we are leaving the CPJ in excellent hands with Candela Cerpa and Kathryn Cunningham. As we go to print, I’m excited to hear from the rest of our team–that’s all of you, our readers–with your responses to the ideas the CPJ presents in Volume 48.
It was truly a pleasure to serve as the Managing Editor for Angles this past year. Working with such a talented and passionate group of individuals was an incredible experience. One of the things I loved most about my role as ME was the opportunity to work with such a diverse range of authors and editors. We had a diverse group of people, including seasoned professionals and up-and-coming students, working together to produce high-quality content that reflected a range of perspectives. As I step back, I’m confident Angles will continue to thrive under new leadership. Thank you for a memorable experience, and I look forward to supporting the journal and blog in 2023-2024.
Post by Kathryn Cunningham, Angles Managing Editor
The Arctic, the area in and around the Arctic Circle in the northernmost part of the globe, is a site of unique geopolitics and international cooperation.
The harsh, remote region has gotten an increasing amount of global attention in the last couple of decades due to climate change-induced warming. It is estimated that the Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the global average, leading to evolving challenges and opportunities. Some challenges include land slumping and landslides due to permafrost thaw, difficulties with resource harvesting, and even an increase in wildfire-friendly conditions in some areas. Given the changing conditions, there are also opportunities in the Arctic for more potential shipping routes, mining, and oil and natural gas extraction, all of which would change the economy and development of the region.
For the last two and half decades, the Arctic’s primary authority – the Arctic Council – has operated in peaceful collaboration and completed productive projects. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has disrupted the collaborative arrangement of the Arctic Council. Arctic governance is in unchartered territory.
Arctic Council Overview
The Arctic Council, established in 1996 by the Ottawa Declaration, is the leading international forum for the Arctic region. It champions environmental protection and sustainable development through cooperation and consensus-based decision-making. The Council has helped to facilitate legally binding agreements, though the body itself lacks the legal authority to create or enforce binding agreements. The role of the Arctic Council has been to promote cooperation and coordination through projects in Work Groups that culminate in assessments, reports, and recommendations for use in agreements and policies.
The Arctic Council has three types of members: Arctic States, Permanent Participants, and Observers. The eight Arctic States, which have territory in the region and rotate the chairmanship overseeing the Council, are: the US, Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The Permanent Participants are the Aleut International Association, the Arctic Athabaskan Council, the Gwich’in Council International, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, the Russian Association of Indigenous People of the North, and the Saami Council. These groups have a unique position in the Arctic Council to consult on decisions and Work Groups. Observers include 13 non-Arctic states and 26 NGOs/intergovernmental organizations.
The Arctic Council has six main Work Groups and currently one active Expert Group. The Work Groups focus on monitoring and assessment, flora and fauna conservation, emergency prevention and response, action for Arctic contaminants, sustainable development, and protecting the Arctic marine environment. The active Expert Group deals with black carbon and methane. There are currently over 100 ongoing projects. The active projects include a Biodiversity Monitoring Program, a Regional Action Plan on Marine Litter, and Black Carbon and Health Assessment.
Current Politics
In early March 2022, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, all other Arctic States issued a joint statement declaring a pause on all Arctic Council partnerships and work. There was hope that the situation in Ukraine would change, but as the war trudged on, it became necessary to reassess Arctic relations. In June 2022 the seven Arctic States issued a statement to continue projects not involving Russia, allowing low-level cooperation to restart, but high-level political cooperation remains out of reach.
Russia accounts for roughly half of the population of the Arctic and is the Arctic state with the most land and coastline. Continuing on without Russia runs counter to all Arctic Council precedents and further obscures the potential for cooperation among all Arctic states. Furthermore, Russia also holds the current two-year Chairmanship of the Arctic Council. On May 11, 2023, the Arctic Council Chairmanship will move from Russia to Norway, and there is an abundance of hope that the Norwegian Chairmanship will forge a path forward while balancing tensions with Russia.
The Arctic Frontiers Conference, an annual meeting of multi-disciplinary Arctic thought-leaders, was held in northern Norway in early 2023 and covered many Arctic-related topics, including a discussion on the trajectory of the Arctic Council. Several Arctic experts weighed in on the discussion:
Whitney Lackenbauer is a professor and researcher at Canada Trent University and stated, “there is no Arctic Council without Russia. We need to abolish the term Arctic 7.” ‘Arctic 7’ is a term used by the media to refer to the Arctic States excluding Russia since the invasion.
Evan Bloom, a Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars said, “Norway has been balancing and protecting the cooperation with Russia for many years while pushing back Russian aggression.”
“They [Norwegian Chairmanship] know how to do it,” said Malgorzata Smieszek who is a researcher at the Arctic University of Norway.
As Arctic communities and ecosystems face the challenges and opportunities of a changing climate as well as political turmoil, the fate of the Arctic Council remains uncertain. Arctic experts demonstrate confidence in the upcoming Norwegian Chairmanship to manage Russian relations well.
Hike in northern Sweden
This post is a preview of my upcoming presentation on Arctic governance and climate change for the Global Urbanization Scholarship taking place May 3, 2023, at UNC-Chapel Hill. Come check it out!
Jacobs, Peter, Nathan Lenssen, Gavin Schmidt, and Robert Rohde. “The Arctic is now warming four times as fast as the rest of the globe.” In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, vol. 2021, pp. A13E-02. 2021.
Ken, Palgrave Macmillan Coates. “The Palgrave Handbook of Arctic Policy and Politics.” (2019): 9-18.
Samantha Pace is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill interested in climate resilience, strategy, and urban design. After receiving her undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from North Carolina State University, she worked at a biotechnology start-up in Research Triangle Park for 3 years. In her free time, Samantha enjoys camping, live music, and making pizzas.
Edited by Candela Cerpa
Featured Image: Tarfala Glacier in northern Sweden. Photo Credit: Samantha Pace
After a close competition, we are pleased to share the winning submission to this year’s Carolina Angles photo contest. Christy Fierros captured this image overlooking Tucson, Arizona, and shares her thoughts on its meaning below.
Christy’s winning photo will also be featured in Volume 48 of the Carolina Planning Journal, Urban Analytics, coming this spring. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to Christy!
The Catalina Mountains and ancient Saguaros witness an area in constant flux. After the Gadsden Purchase of 1854 annexed this area of Mexico into the United States, “The Old Pueblo” grew. While urban renewal schemes are well-known in many east-coast cities, few are recognized in the Southwest. In the 1960’s, Downtown (pictured), was targeted by the City in their “slum clearance” project. The nearly 400-acre area destroyed was multi-ethnic, but predominantly Chicanx and had walkable neighborhoods with adobe homes, small grocers, and shops—exactly the mix of uses that millions of dollars are being spent to emulate today.
As more people move to Tucson for its affordability, arid climate, and economic opportunities, the city grapples with improving its transportation systems. Tucson recently acquired federal funds to implement equitable Transit-Oriented Development (eTOD). A Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system is proposed from this funding with a route crossing through areas of south Tucson where the median household income is $32K and rents are rapidly rising. While an improved public transit system and more dense development is badly needed, the BRT system represents a new spatial conflict for Tucson’s working-class who more often than not, bear the burden of land use decisions while others reap the benefits.
Many new, mixed-use and transit-oriented developments in the city core cater to higher income folks, university students, and tourists. The BRT project and new developments surrounding historic barrios look like gentrification to many communities in South Tucson. Mi Barrio No Se Vende (“My Neighborhood Is Not For Sale”) yard signs are scattered throughout. While the eTOD funding promises to expand affordable housing to prevent displacement, many hope history doesn’t repeat and the project funding stays true to its name.
Christy Fierros is a first-generation master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning specializing in Land Use and Environmental planning. She received a dual bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona in Environmental Studies and Geography. She is passionate about making environmental injustices nonexistent and planning practices rooted in repair and respect. Hiking, bird watching, gardening, or looking at trees are just a few things that replenish her after a long day at the computer.
Looking for another opportunity to share your work? Submit to the CPJ Cover Photo contest!
The Carolina Planning Journal is now accepting submissions for the cover photo of this year’s journal, and we’d love to feature your image! Submissions should be related to this year’s journal theme, Urban Analytics: Capabilities and Critiques. Examples of previous cover images can be found at the journal’s online repository. If your photo is selected for the cover, you will receive $100 for the rights to use it in the journal as well as photo attribution.
To enter submit your high-resolution (min. 300 dpi) photo to carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com with the subject “CPJ Cover Photo Submission,” along with a brief explanation of how your image relates to the journal’s theme. Contact the Journal with any further questions.
Your 2022-23 Editors:
LANCE GLOSS | Editor-in-Chief & JO KWON | Managing Editor
Lance is a second-generation urban planner with a passion for economic development strategies that center natural resource conservation and community uplift. He served as Managing Editor of the Urban Journal at Brown University, Section Editor at the College Hill Independent, and Senior Planner for the City of Grand Junction. Hailing from sunny Colorado, he earned his BA in Urban Studies at Brown and will earn his Master’s in City and Regional Planning in 2023. Jo (Joungwon) is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in City and Regional Planning with an interest in using visuals in environmental planning. She has been a part of CPJ since 2019. With a background in Statistics and English Literature, she received her M.A. in Computational Media at Duke University.
Professional planners need special knowledge to accomplish their core tasks. We know this. It may be even more important that planners understand why they do these tasks. This was one of Mitch Silver’s main messages as he connected the dots between ethics and outcomes in the planning profession.
The celebrated planner graced the DCRP with a presentation on November 18, thanks to the Siler Distinguished Lecture Series and a special grant from the College. Silver’s list of credentials could fill a book. Suffice it to say that he is one of a select few in the AICP College of Fellows, and that he famously served as the New York City Parks Commissioner, Planning Director for the City of Raleigh, and President of the APA. Today, he presents to planners and developers across the country as a consultant with McAdams.
Silver’s words for DCRP focused on planning with purpose — the motivations for planners’ work. He asked planners to think about their Code of Ethics, which centers on the public good. He also highlighted the ethical commitments of allied professions and meditated on the Creed that professional engineers profess upon licensing. He advised young planners to see their ethics as a compass and a rudder. He asked that we feel and live our ethics, not just talk about them or use them for cover. In short, he advised that planners “be their values.”
Silver did a brilliant job cutting through the jargon on diversity, equity, and inclusion to get at the core messages of this movement. He noted that he—and other insightful planners—prioritized DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) long before it became an institutional slogan and a must-have. He noted that the growing clutter of verbal soup and bureaucracy regarding DEI can get in the way of real outcomes. What, he asked, are the possible consequences of naming a DEI officer for your organization? A positive outcome might be showing that the organization will dedicate resources to inclusion. A negative outcome might be an absolution of responsibility in other areas of the organization. Shouldn’t the whole organization need to live these values? Shouldn’t all resources be deployed with a mind to inclusion?
In this vein, Mitch Silver suggested that equity—an idea usually communicated with lengthy, complex metaphors—can be better communicated as fairness. Fairness. People understand the idea of fairness. Silver suggested that even a child can tell the fair from the unfair.
Silver talked through a policy of fairness in New York’s system of public parks. When he took the job in 2014, his team systematically reviewed where the City has spent funds on parks. Though NYC had spent hundreds of millions on parks in the preceding two decades, more than 200 parks had not received a single dime. This, said Silver, was not fair.
To remedy the situation, he “bumped those parks to the front of the long line for funding.” He shared truly touching stories of transformation. Fenced off asphalt slabs punctured by runaway weeds became places of joy and sanctuary. Children’s lives became richer overnight. The social worlds of seniors and disabled people were infused with energy.
Mitchell also stressed what he called “the down payment.” In many scenarios, a down payment is what cities must make to build public confidence. When walking into a public engagement session, Silver advises, don’t come in and ask people for their input. Especially in communities where the input has been chronically ignored for decades, such a request can ring hollow. Instead, come to the public when you are able to say, “we have two million dollars already committed to spending on your priorities. Tell us how to spend it.”
Down payments are made in many ways. When NYC’s underfunded parks moved to the front of the line, a full rebuild couldn’t be launched for all of them at once. So, the Parks staff made a down payment in the form of fresh coats of paint, new grass, new benches, taking down fences, and incorporating the sidewalk as the outer sphere of the park.
Silver also discussed ways to reach the public on the real terms of their lives. He advised embracing non-traditional tools. Under his watch, and during the lockdowns of the pandemic, NYC Parks put signs on trees reading, “It’s Okay to Hug Me.” They took down “No Loitering” signs in parks and replaced some with pro-loitering signs. After all, says Silver, loitering is what we do in parks.
Loitering is for parks, hugging is for trees, and planning is for people. Mitch Silver would have planners remember that. Be fair, be honest, and be creative. With these commitments as a down payment, planners should have much less trouble identifying and supporting the public good.
Lance is a second-generation urban planner with a passion for economic development strategies that center natural resource conservation and community uplift. He served as Managing Editor of the Urban Journal at Brown University, Section Editor at the College Hill Independent, and Senior Planner for the City of Grand Junction. Hailing from sunny Colorado, he earned his BA in Urban Studies at Brown and will earn his Master in City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023. Outside of work, he can be found on his bicycle, in the woods, or on the rugby pitch.
Carolina Planning Journal (CPJ), the oldest student-run planning journal in the country, is excited to announce the imminent release of Volume 47: Planning for Healthy Cities. This issue features articles and book reviews from a wide range of planning students, practitioners, and scholars; see the editor’s note below for brief summaries of some of the topics covered.
We would love to be able to send you a print copy of this year’s journal. To order your own copy(ies), complete this brief subscription form and send us a payment via Venmo, Zelle, or cash or check; additional payment details are provided on the subscription form.
Winston Churchill was once quoted as saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” We as planners have a responsibility to look to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting challenges, as an opportunity to learn and better frame how our work can bolster health. Volume 47 of the Carolina Planning Journal is titled “Planning for Healthy Cities.” The title itself is aspiration, as the concept that planners alone can ensure healthy communities is fantasy. Planners must collaborate with, listen to, and learn from multitudes of individuals from varying fields. Health is not tied to just the physical space of the city; it spreads beyond tangible infrastructure and extends deep into the roots of a community.
By 2050 it is projected that 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. The weight of this and other projections have prompted many influential organizations such as the European Union, World Health Organization, and American Planning Association to examine the pivotal role planners play in improving and protecting the public’s health for generations to come.
To explore the many definitions and concepts of a planner’s role in promoting health, we asked students, professionals, and researchers alike to explore the nexus of planning and health. The resulting articles provide an array of interpretations and important perspectives on how planning is intertwined with health.
Decades of research have shown a connection between adverse outcomes from childhood lead exposure and its ties to racial and class inequalities. Elijah Gullett (UNC ’22) contributes to this body of work by examining a case study of 31 counties in North Carolina. Importantly, the topic of healthy cities extends beyond symptoms identified by a medical practitioner and includes how social anchors can influence a community’s economic health. Marielle Saunders (MCRP ’22) and Eve Lettau (MCRP ’22) examine the link between health outcomes and economic development strategies. Their article leverages three case studies to explore strategies that shift the economic development paradigm from pure growth to quality development and community wellbeing.
During COVID-19 there was a constant struggle to effectively and clearly communicate evolving scientific information. Rebecca Kemper, PhD, Frederic Bertley, PhD, and Joseph Wisne consider the struggles cities have had converting successive, highly technical medical research findings into protective health advisories. Their work seeks to provide planners with an understanding of how to use cultural institutions as a public health resource and communicative resource. Developing tools and frameworks that can assist planners to best address varying issues is an important field of research.
Emily Gvino (MCRP ’21) and Julia Maron (MCRP ’22) look at how local planners and municipalities, primarily in urban communities, can best address extreme heat within the lens of equitable resilience. The reframing of how planners can address climate resilience provides many parallels to how planners may address other community issues. Michelle Nance and Emily Scott-Cruz identify ways public health intersects with transportation planning and provide recommendations to North Carolina transportation planners, policymakers, and advocates. Their article offers advice for how to improve health outcomes through changing transportation planning practices, policy making, and prioritization.
Building on the importance of developing safe transportation system policies, Daniel Capparella, Ashleigh Glasscock, and Jessica Hill (DCRP ’09) use Nashville, TN, to develop a non-motorized risk index. Their system-level tool can be used to proactively identify areas with unsafe non-motorized conditions and motivate other transportation planners to reimagine how they classify risk. Vision Zero, a global movement to end trafficrelated fatalities, takes a systemic approach to road safety. While Vision Zero plans have grown in popularity across the country, they are implemented to varying degrees. Seth LaJeunesse, Becky Naumann, Elyse Keefe, and Kelly R. Evenson examined 31 United States Vision Zero plans published through mid-2019 to explore the degree to which local and regional transportation safety plans intended to eliminate serious and fatal road injury (Vision Zero) integrated land use plans, planners, and ordinances.
This year’s cover photo comes from Josephine Justin (DCRP Master’s student). She explores the relationship physical spaces have with health, offering New York City as an example. “Two years ago, New York confirmed its first COVID-19 case and the City shut down its schools, restaurants, and businesses. As the world went into a state of lockdown, NYC emerged as an early epicenter of the pandemic. NYC’s skyline features in the cover photo. The city was bustling with residents and tourists when this picture was taken in March of 2021, but the legacy of the pandemic lives on as we mourn those we lost.
These past two years have shown us the importance of this year’s journal theme, Planning for Healthy Cities. While NYC and the world has been returning to normalcy, the pandemic is far from over as new variants emerge and cities face obstacles in distributing vaccines, tests, and treatments. The virus has exposed social and racial inequities in our cities and how the built environment can affect our health. May we use the lessons we have learned during this pandemic to rebuild our communities to be healthy, sustainable, and resilient.
The Carolina Planning Journal (CPJ) and ∆NGLES are excited to announce the editors for the 2022-2023 school year: Lance Gloss and Joungwon Kwon. Read on to learn more about them.
Lance is a second-generation urban planner with a passion for economic development strategies that center natural resource conservation and community uplift. He served as Managing Editor of the Urban Journal at Brown University, Section Editor at the College Hill Independent, and Senior Planner for the City of Grand Junction. Hailing from sunny Colorado, he earned his BA in Urban Studies at Brown and will earn his Master in City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023. Outside of work, he can be found on his bicycle, in the woods, or on the rugby pitch.
JOUNGWON KWON | Managing Editor, Angles
Jo (Joungwon) Kwon is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. She is interested in using visuals in plans, specifically in environmental planning. She has been a part of CPJ since 2019. With a background in Statistics and English Literature, she received her M.A. in Computational Media at Duke University. In her free time, she enjoys watching indie films, going to live performances, and drinking good coffee. This summer Jo will be working on her proposal on the role of visuals in planning.
Please join us in giving a huge thank you and congratulations to our outgoing editors Pierce Holloway and Emma Vinella-Brusher! Pierce has graduated with a Master of City and Regional Planning. Emma will be in her third year and will continue to be a part of CPJ in Fall 2022. Read on for reflections from the two editors.
I had the pleasure of serving as the Editor-in-Chief for the previous year which was a great education on the art of coordination. It was an exciting role to fill, paralleling the return to campus for our department as well as UNC. I learned how to be a better communicator and project manager from the myriad of authors and editors I worked with. My role allowed me to learn just how many moving parts are required to take a journal from an idea to a fully-fledged published journal you can hold in your hands. A massive thank you goes out to all the students, authors, and departmental staff that offered their time to make this year’s journal a success! I will continue to be thankful for the experience and look forward to seeing how the journal evolves with each year’s cohorts.
This past year was another busy one for the Carolina Angles blog. As Managing Editor, I was lucky enough to work with over a dozen talented authors, editors, and content creators to showcase the incredible work happening at both UNC and within the broader planning community. From the impact of tech on housing affordability, to the history of Durham’s queer bars, to the role structural racism plays in food access, Angles explored the challenges and opportunities within the field of planning from a variety of perspectives. I am so grateful for this experience, and am looking forward to taking a step back from my leadership role this coming year while continuing to support both the print journal and online blog. CPJ is in great hands with the rising leadership team, and I’m so excited to watch the journal and blog continue to grow!
Each year, over 3,000 pedestrians and 850 bicyclists are hit by vehicles here in North Carolina, making our state one of the least safe states for walking and biking[i]. Last month, the UNC Department of City & Regional Planning and Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety were joined by Tom Flood of Rovélo Creative and Arleigh Greenwald aka Bike Shop Girl for a free, two-day workshop on addressing this crisis.
A “ghost bike” sits at Franklin and Graham in Chapel Hill, in honor of cyclist Nick Walton who passed away earlier this year (Source: author)
The April 22-23 Flipping the Script on Traffic Violence event featured a guided bike ride and walk, a facilitated discussion about marketing/storytelling, and a workshop to develop marketing content. Students, academics, professionals, and elected officials gathered together to learn how to better communicate the critical issue of traffic violence towards our most vulnerable road users.
Flipping the Script kicked off at 1 PM Friday with a casual bicycle ride through the streets of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and the UNC campus. Participants covered ~4.5 miles and stopped to photograph and discuss traffic safety concerns along the way. This was followed by a one-mile walking tour of downtown Chapel Hill, for another opportunity to identify safety challenges for pedestrians and bicyclists in the area. The day concluded with a facilitated debrief of both tours and discussion of opportunities to advocate for and improve local road safety.
The bike route, starting at Wilson Park in Carrboro and ending at New East on UNC’s Chapel Hill campus (Source: author)
Walking tour participants critique a Chapel Hill pedestrian crossing (Source: Tom Flood)
Day 2 of Flipping the Script consisted of an afternoon hands-on workshop, where participants practiced crafting effective media messages about road safety challenges. The group developed messaging around the safety concerns facing pedestrians and cyclists to share with the public and local elected leaders in the hopes of making our streets safer for all.
Tom Flood shows participants the language used by the media to describe crashes resulting in injury or death (Source: Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety)
Thank you to Tab Combs, Seth LaJeunesse, Tom Flood, Arleigh Greenwald, and everyone else in putting on this fantastic event!
Featured image: Bicyclists participate in the 2022 Durham Ride of Silence to honor cyclists who have been killed or injured while cycling on public roadways, courtesy of author
Earlier this semester, a group of seven UNC Transportation Planning students made the trek up to Blacksburg, Virginia for the 2022 Southern District Institute of Transportation Engineers (SDITE) Student Leadership Summit. Jointly hosted by Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, the conference brought together students from 24 universities for a weekend of presentations and networking.
Under the theme “Invent the Future: Developing the Next Generation of Transportation Leaders,” the goal of the conference was to promote leadership and professional development for transportation students across the Southern U.S. Though the event largely catered to transportation engineers, our DCRP students still came away with some new knowledge and professional connections.
The bulk of the conference occurred on Saturday, February 26th with a jam-packed day of speakers and interactive sessions. Highlights included “Big Data in Transportation” led by Mena Lockwood of the Virginia Department of Transportation, and “Soft Skills in a Technical World” by Chris Tiesler of Kittelson & Associates Inc. The day’s activities concluded with dinner, social, and networking at Eastern Divide Brewing in Blacksburg.
Check out the images below for a peek into life at the SDITE Student Leadership Summit.
Our home for the weekend – UNC’s track and field team also happened to be staying here!
The conference kicked off Friday with dinner and speeches
Culture shock for this Californian – Chick-fil-a for breakfast
Attending sessions with other young transportation professionals
Had to stop and admire Blacksburg’s bicycle infrastructure, of course
The best way to wind down after a long day – darts!
Featured image: 2022 SDITE SLS Attendees, courtesy of conference organizers
For the better part of a century in the United States, exclusion, restriction, and fastidiousness were core values within the accepted best practices around zoning and development. While national trends seem to slowly be reversing course toward less aggressive regulation of uses and limitations on density, the built, legal, and economic environment in communities across the country strongly reflect this history. Even in places that actively seek to be bastions of progressive culture and policy, the legacy of older philosophies persists. And the most severe and obvious of these reflections is the current crisis of affordability in housing.
As a small town with a consciously welcoming culture adjacent to the state’s flagship university, Carrboro, NC, is emblematic of this wider trend. Despite broad community consensus on the need for affordable housing for all residents, housing prices have risen faster than median incomes for decades and new housing construction has been outpaced by population growth for just as long. Carrboro has not been idle in the face of this problem; many policy initiatives have been attempted to address the scarcity of affordable homes. But due to more significant dynamics within the town and the country, these solutions have consistently come up short either in design or implementation.
In an effort to explore and address this archetypical wicked problem, this project from 2021’s course on Zoning For Equity uses mapping, statistics, legal analysis, and investigative journalism to determine why affordable housing is so difficult to come by in an environment so seemingly amenable to its creation. Through the medium of ArcGIS StoryMap, Feel Free (To Be Cost Burdened) describes the background of Carrboro’s housing crisis, the most notable attempts that have been made to address it, and the trends and policies that continue to negate the impacts of those attempts. The StoryMap then goes beyond analysis by offering a suite of potential solutions, ranging from immediate and practical tweaks to Carrboro’s zoning code to grand reworkings of America’s conception of the relationship between property rights and human rights.
In addition to existing as a static artifact of research, Feel Free (To Be Cost Burdened)has entered the world of planning politics in its own right; Its creators presented it to both the Orange County Board of Health and the Carrboro Affordable Housing Advisory Board in early 2022. Hopefully, this project can be revisited and revised to reflect breakthrough successes in Carrboro’s fight for housing affordability in the near future.
Henry Read is a Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, with a focus on land use policy. He is fascinated with the minutia of development regulation and doesn’t understand why so many people think zoning is boring. He hopes to work in the public sector after graduation, and would like to be remembered as the guy who got your town to stop requiring bars to have customer parking and start planting native fruit trees in parks.
Edited by Jo Kwon
Featured image: Feel Free (To Be Cost Burdened) StoryMap
